Monday, 2 September 2013

I recently worked again with my friend Alex Chandon on a competition film, which was our first film together since Inbred in 2011

The rules of the competition were very strict and very challenging.
6 lines of dialogue, 6 cast, 6 crew (including post production) a maximum budget of £666
6 hours of shooting time, - and the whole film couldn't be longer than 3 minutes.
Oh, and on top of that, there were only 6 titles to choose from.

Alex chose '6th Sense' for his film, and we got to work.

Starring Dominic Brunt (Emmerdale, Inspector Morse & director of Before Dawn) - it was shot in Yorkshire, and told the story of a female psychic spanning several decades of bizarre events and inexplicable phenomena!

As well as score and sound design - I was on-set to help out wherever I could, which this time around included lighting, silly-string spraying, set-building / decoration, lending a hand with some make-up effects (incredibly executed by Graham Taylor) and some gory late-night limb throwing - which I think we all participated in.

Once it was edited together, Alex send me a rough version as usual, and I started with music score and sound design.
Alex gave me pretty much free rein to do whatever I wanted, which was plenty of fun, because it gave me the chance to totally play with music, and go nuts with my own sound effects.

The Music:
Aside from a short synth-pop tune for the 80's section, the vibe was mainly sci-fi and suspense for each short section of the film, and if you get the chance to see it, you will understand why.

The Sound Design:
Aside from the usual foley stuff; footsteps, pops, bangs etc - the design was everything from flying fish to floating plasma orbs, with some splashy full-body explosions and nuclear blasts too, so 'eclectic' is probably the word I would choose to describe that.

6th Sense was chosen for the final six movies of the competition, and was screened on Sunday August 22nd at the biggest cinema screen in the UK - The Odeon in Leicester Square.
It played well to a full house of over a thousand people.

We came second place, out of over 150 other competition films!
Pretty cool all the same, and loads of fun to make.